The Mysterious Connexion: Projective Identification and Enactment in Process Work

The Mysterious Connexion: Projective Identification and Enactment in Process Work

A Two-Day Workshop with Dr. Heward Wilkinson

When: 1-2 July, 2017

Where: The Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain Street, Cork

Cost: €180.00. Tea and coffee included.

CPD Hours: 11 – certificate awarded on conclusion.

Dr. Heward Wilkinson has lectured extensively on Projective Identification and Enactment, developing a rich and thoroughly considered approach to these topics, from which he has prepared a special two-day experiential workshop for Symposion. The Mysterious Connexion promises to be a memorable experience from which practitioners will draw in their work for years to come.

Projective Identification – the other side of its mirror is Counter-Transference! – is a mode of communication, found far beyond process work in therapy. It is alive and well in vast human communication processes, families, groups, and collective situations. Therapy process work is a uniquely powerful mode by which to tap into it. It is not merely the raw reactiveness of either therapist or client, but more, – profound interactive communication.

And, as, in Eliot’s phrase, the ‘tentacular roots, reaching down to the deepest terrors and desires’ – and shames – of its underneath reachings, are expressed in process and in replications, we grasp that, – not merely various forms of ‘acting-out’ or ‘acting-in’—but all therapy process modes, mentalised and/or embodied, are a seamless shot silk tapestry of Enactment. Enactment process actually defines and underpins the therapy processes of the narrative-relational therapies. Enactment is not simply regressive or defensive, but the all-pervasive medium of the work, rising to poetic epiphany. In and upon that rich medium, Projective Identifications play out subtly at all the levels – above, below, and in-between.

Both Projective Identification and Enactment are commonly oversimplified, even shrivelled down to reductive guises. But, they are both realities, – and powerful metaphors amongst many metaphors. We’ll seek to explore them together, in this workshop, in all their richness and many-sidedness, – mainly experientially, but against a modest background of theory, – and find out how taking them in in their deeper aspects alters our clinical work.

Who should attend?

Both Advanced training students in psychotherapy and counselling, and experienced counsellors and psychotherapists who wish to deepen their understanding of a powerful dimension in the narrative relational psychotherapies.

What will be covered in the two days?

Against the background of a general understanding of communicative process and enactment in a generic sense, various processes on a continuum with classical models of Projective Identification (PI) will be explored.

Format

The format will be mainly experiential with some seminar/dialogue type teaching, and with a proportion of live demonstration work, supervision or live work.

About Heward Wilkinson

Dr Heward Wilkinson, BA, MA, MSc Psychotherapy, D. Psychotherapy (b. 1945 and married), UKCP and EAIP Fellow, Hon. Member, EAP, Integrative Psychotherapist and Supervisor, is now trainer with Scarborough Counselling and Psychotherapy Training Institute, an MO of UKCP, and Guest Faculty Member with the Living Institute, Toronto, Canada. He is author of The Muse as Therapist: A New Poetic Paradigm for Psychotherapy, Co-Editor of two UKCP book series books, and Senior Editor of International Journal of Psychotherapy from 1994-2004. Previous Board Member of UKCP, and EAP, and Chair of HIPC/UKCP, he is now Vice President of the European Association for Integrative Psychotherapy (EAIP). He has been offering workshops and consultancy in Ireland for nearly 25 years, including with the UCC Higher Diploma and MA in Integrative Psychotherapy. Editor of the Leavis Society Newsletter, his emerging and growing field of enquiry is the understanding of Historicity/Historical Consciousness as primary paradigms for human existence.

To learn more and to book your place, please visit www.symposion.ie or phone 087 904 0450.